Ferranti Mark 1 - Oldest Recorded Computer Music

Oldest Recorded Computer Music

Included in the Ferranti Mark 1's instruction set was a hoot command, which enabled the machine to give auditory feedback to its operators. The sound generated could be altered in pitch, a feature which was exploited when the Mark 1 made the earliest known recording of computer music, playing a medley which included "God Save the King", "Baa Baa Black Sheep", and "In the Mood". The recording was made by the BBC towards the end of 1951, and the programming was done by Christopher Strachey, a maths teacher at Harrow and a friend of Alan Turing. It was not however the first computer to have played music – CSIRAC, Australia's first digital computer, achieved that with a rendition of Colonel Bogey.

Read more about this topic:  Ferranti Mark 1

Famous quotes containing the words oldest, recorded, computer and/or music:

    Harvey, Jr.: I was afraid something like this would happen. Being around all those young students was bound to give Father ideas.
    Laura: Young ideas, nuts. They’re the oldest ideas in the world.
    Tom Waldman (d. 1985)

    The anarchy, assassination, and sacrilege by which the Kingdom of France has been disgraced, desolated, and polluted for some years past cannot but have excited the strongest emotions of horror in every virtuous Briton. But within these days our hearts have been pierced by the recital of proceedings in that country more brutal than any recorded in the annals of the world.
    James Boswell (1740–1795)

    The analogy between the mind and a computer fails for many reasons. The brain is constructed by principles that assure diversity and degeneracy. Unlike a computer, it has no replicative memory. It is historical and value driven. It forms categories by internal criteria and by constraints acting at many scales, not by means of a syntactically constructed program. The world with which the brain interacts is not unequivocally made up of classical categories.
    Gerald M. Edelman (b. 1928)

    And this shall be for music when no one else is near,
    The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear!
    That only I remember, that only you admire,
    Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.
    Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)